Earthquakes pose a serious hazard to many areas of the U.S., including Southern California. Professor Fox will present an overview of current research efforts to better understand the seismic performance and survivability of geotechnical structures, such as retaining walls and bridge foundations, through large-scale testing at the UC San Diego Englekirk Structural Engineering Center.

"CitiSense – A Participatory Air Quality Sensing System for Real-Time User Feedback"

Government pollution monitoring is sparse, reporting regional measures, not individual exposure. CitiSense consists of a body-worn low-power board, a back-end server for machine learning and sharing, and a smartphone application that relays sensor readings from board to server, and displays exposure information. Studies show effects on user awareness and behavior.

Professor, Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
Stanford and Beverly Penner Professor of Applied Sciences
Director of the Center for Medical Devices and Instrumentation

"Masters of Advanced Studies in Medical Devices Engineering"

The new Masters in Advanced Studies in Medical Device Engineering is designed to provide a high-quality and focused educational experience for professional engineers who plan to become technical leaders in the field of biomedical instrumentation and devices. The UC San Diego Master of Advanced Study in Medical Device Engineering is a unique interdisciplinary program providing specialized courses in clinical needs assessment and the option of designing and prototyping a medical device or instrument. This program provides a specialized education in mechanics and transport, anatomy and physiology, modern life science technologies, biomaterials, wireless embedded controls, and computer aided design. Students are also introduced to the specific business issues surrounding this industry, including product launching, regulatory and payment issues, and standards and compliance.

Thin, flexible, invisible electronics that can be embedded in temporary tattoos, can sense multiple modalities of biological signals, and can wirelessly transmit them to a mobile device, show great promise for transforming the practice of medicine from periodic monitoring of signals with bulky, wired sensors in hospital settings to continuous monitoring of health with invisible wireless sensors in natural environments.

"Biomolecular Architectures and Systems for Nanoengineering Thin Film Devices"

While nanomaterials have shown great potential for electronic and photonic applications, their organization onto surfaces for incorporation into functional devices has remained difficult. To address some of these challenges, Professor Cha will describe recent efforts to self-assemble nanoscale materials on surfaces with control over material location and crystallographic orientation.

Thanks to a revolution in music production and distribution, unprecedented amounts of new music proliferate the web from every corner of the world. By developing novel music recommendation algorithms and search technologies, Professor Lanckriet's work is poised to have a broad societal impact by helping millions of users find and organize musical content.